Only In America

Once, it seemed the answer was humanity itself; the question being, how did things get this bad. The imperfection of the human brain was to blame, having created problems beyond its capabilities to solve. Pretending it away, making up conspiracies, it’s gone into “tilt” mode as self-preservation.

 

But that can’t be the explanation. Every country but ours has been addressing climate change, and, now, attacking the pandemic successfully, as virtually all their citizens accepted responsibility. The problem, in other words, isn’t humankind. It’s us.

 

Only “we” pulled out of the climate accords. “Our” response to the virus has been catastrophic. Encouraged by an ignorant sociopath, millions of citizens have chosen to reject simple and logical rules. Republican governors and congressfolk, too. While other hard-hit countries are now safely reopening, in ours it’s worsening daily, especially in states that opened too soon, whose governors aped an irrational “president.”

 

How did we become an outlier nation, whose citizens are unwelcome across the globe, looked upon with pity and bewilderment by those who once saw us as the light of the world? A nation that produced Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, Obama, now “led” by a simulacrum who brags about passing a test designed to tell if you could find your way home without help.

 

In no other country have so many refused to wear masks, even physically attacking innocent employees who enforce it. If lunatics abide everywhere, America alone provides the spectacle of citizens claiming masks are satanic, are poisoning us, are communism; that the virus is fake, or created by Dr. Fauci; that a vaccine will contain microchips. Only here was a video, touted by Trump, viewed by millions, featuring backline “Frontline Doctors” downplaying the virus; one of whom warns of alien DNA, sex with demons, and vaccines that create atheism.

 

We’re the only developed country whose “leader” ignored and silenced Covid scientists. Wants to hide their data. Called for “liberation” of states whose governors took action. Insists, as American cases and deaths explode while other countries’ fall, that he’s doing a “beautiful” job. Rejecting their lying eyes, masses of indoctrinated citizens believe him, indifferent to endangering others, eschewing inconvenience. Such people would have deserted Valley Forge at the first snowflake.

 

What is it about America? How have we, singular among advanced nations, become unwilling and unable to confront challenges as we once did, to the benefit of the world? Formerly a “rugged individualist,” the iconic American is now selfish, paranoid, and dangerously uninformed.

 

It’s not accidental. It’s the direct result of a plan hatched in the 1990s by Gingrichian Republicans: create a self-replicating cult of credulity, unable to tell truth from fiction. Overwhelm them with disinformation, amplified by an unending stream of broadcast propaganda. Ignorance begets ignorance, and that begets votes. How perfectly it has worked.

 

Its grandest achievement: Trump. Previously, it elected legislators determined, as they’ve admitted, to prevent President Barack Obama from doing anything good for America; who, to that end, abandoned legislating, eventually forgetting how. Helpful bills from the Democratic-led House sit in the Senate, undebated, while Congressional Republicans can’t agree on how to mitigate the economic collapse caused by their own absent leadership: whether to help people in need or mostly their donors and Trump, who cashed in bigly, last time around. So far, they’ve included more for the Pentagon, cuts in unemployment stipends, and zero local aid. But they, the Gingrichian party of Trump, would outlaw lawsuits against corporations that fail to protect employees.

 

In a country with enough science-denying, disinformed, embittered people to put Trump in office, there are plenty enough to prevent controlling a pandemic. Had our country been led rationally, we’d have already reopened safely, and our children would be heading back to school. Now, after Trump’s inexcusable mismanagement, the only option might be to start over. Maybe, because his coterie finally convinced him the virus is affecting white people in red states and, therefore, his electoral chances, he’d get it right.

 

Unlikely. He’s still pushing hydroxychloroquine and pre-discrediting election integrity.

 

We’re not the first country in which a sociopathic despot wrested control with false promises, warnings of domestic enemies, declarations that he alone could fix it, and brutal shows of force. Eventually, though, the oppressed have risen in protest, establishing democracy. As if it’s been the plan all along, begun even before the 90s, ours could be the first to start with democracy and go the other way.

  

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Pinochet In Portland

Maybe it was a dream. When Barack Obama was president, and now it sure seems like a dream (intelligence, integrity, competence, humor, nice family, no indictments), weren’t a bunch of self-described “patriots” hoarding guns and ammo like toilet paper in a pandemic? Predicting government troops would be rounding up civilians and hauling them away? Building bunkers, promising to defend our “freedoms” with their lives?

Funny thing: what they predicted with the certainty of Covid-hoaxers and climate-change deniers has come to pass, just down I-5. Anonymous, heavily-armed federal agents, uninvited, snatching citizens off the streets, hauling them away in unmarked vans. Citizens who, for the most part, had been protesting non-violently. No identification on those armed government kidnappers, no warrants. Swinging truncheons, gassing, shooting rubber bullets. Maybe I shouldn’t have said “funny.”

Unlike those fevered “patriots,” people having more than two Betz cells to rub together knew this would never happen under President Obama. Same with those imaginary “antifa” demonstrations, to which the tumescent, mega-armed, MAGA-hatted have been showing up, ready to lay down their lives for Old Glory, Confederate flags, and the occasional swastika. That those events were obvious troll-jobs didn’t occur to them, even after the third or fourth time.

Maybe those heroic one-minute men knew President Obama was never going to lead UN tanks and ISIS soldiers up their driveways; knew they’d not need to make good on their rodomontade. But where are they now, as Portland is Pinocheted? Citizens are being disappeared, though less permanently, as if America were 1970s Chile. As if our “president” were the third-world strongman to which he aspires, against which those faux militias promised defiance. Having claimed resistance as its primary purpose, the NRA is missing, too. Moms are there, though, arm in arm, braving the gas. Who are the real patriots?

Our heavily-armed, Obama-hating heroes weren’t really concerned, then, about out-of-control government coming for people exercising their rights. Turns out it’s fine when a tyrannical leader kidnaps and batters citizens, as long as they’re libtard commies. Some might call that short-sighted collaboration.

A brave guy is Donald “Found-a-dementia-test-difficult” Trump. Afraid to serve in Vietnam, as this columnist did, he’s courageously ordering troops into Democrat-run cities, unleashing beatings, gassing people who seek only fairness, to galvanize his base. Anxious to have them forget his disastrous pandemic response and the Russian bounty disgrace, this he’ll do. And, more blind than those he gassed, Trumpists are delighted. Beating up liberals absolves 140,000 American deaths, Constitution be damned.

Because of the “Patriot Act,” some say Trump has authority to send troops to protect federal property. Okay, fine. Deploy them to steps of federal buildings and pedestals of statues, to hold off the chalk, donuts, and spray cans. But assailing peaceful crowds; breaking bones of a Navy veteran whose offense was challenging them to uphold their oath; beating on-scene medics; firing tear gas at resolute, non-aggressive moms? That’s what history’s Pinochets do. And when enough citizens excuse it, because it’s not them, that’s how they consolidate power.

America was built on protest. Dumping tea into Boston Harbor; women marching, year after year, for suffrage, assaulted, jailed; MLK, Jr, John Lewis, and other brave souls, risking lives for equal rights, paying with life and blood; Stonewall. Absent the right to assemble to petition for redress of grievances, who would we be, and who will we become? First among the ten, that right is inseparable from America’s greatness. Or was, before Trump began striking at the heart of it.

Though he and his “news” liars pretend otherwise, Portland wasn’t being overrun, nor were people hiding in their homes, local police overwhelmed as terrorists roamed a city in flames. Like Seattle, it’s a couple blocks of inconvenience, as city life otherwise goes on as usual. If there are situations that might justify Federales overtaking local law enforcement, this isn’t. And what has Trump’s banana-republic despotism accomplished? More resistance. Which he’ll turn into context-free doomsday ads.

If Trumpist-Republicans are unconcerned when their “president,” sinking in the polls, turns federal troops upon pro-equality demonstrations; if they ignore the ominous implications because it’s a “liberal” city and the demonstrators aren’t red-hatted, they’re deaf to America’s death-rattle.

Every American, including Trumpists, should be horrified by what’s happening. Those who aren’t, because it’s only “lefties” being brutalized, are anything but patriots. They’d have ratted on the Boston tea-dumpers, thrown rocks at suffragettes, and taunted innocent Black children as they bravely integrated schools.

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We Have Met The Enemy

As Trump’s unfitness and venality become more apparent every day, there’s someone emerging who’s an even greater danger. It’s you.

Yes, if you still support him, it’s you. You’re the reliable enabler of his cyclonic destruction. He knows it. He counts on you to let him get away with his uncaring ruination, and unless you tear off the blinders, broaden your sources of information, you remain inextricably part it.

If you’re unbothered after what’s happened even in just the last few days, you can’t claim to care about America or the rule of law (the actual rule of law, not Trump’s counterfactual “law and order” campaign doublespeak). Not to mention the health of our planet and people. Ask yourself if you’d have been equally unbothered had President Barack Obama done what Trump is doing.

Consider Roger Stone, the smirking embodiment of Republican electoral trashing since the resignation of the malefactor whose face is tattooed on his back. For decades, he’s gloated about his lies and corruption. Convicted by a jury, unanimously, of seven felonies, ones that threaten the integrity of our justice system – obstructing Congress, perjury, witness intimidation – all to hide Trump’s crimes, Trump let him off, and he’s gloating even more. “He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him,” he said. “... But I didn’t.”

Consider that as you accept Trump’s claim that Stone was “treated very unfairly.” Understand that when he says he could have turned, he’s acknowledging he knows the crimes. Like a Mafia don, Trump rewards silence, telling his other made men, too: lie for me, I’ll take care of you.

If you vote for him anyway, you’re complicit. When you cast your non-corrupt, not-counterfeited-by-a-foreign-country mail-in ballot, check the box that says presidential crime and cover-up is okay by you. Have a look at the photo of Stone flashing the white power sign, surrounded by neo-Nazis pals doing the same. If you have no objection, your unqualified devotion puts you in the picture, too.

If you were unconcerned when Trump’s (not our) Attorney General fired every US Attorney looking into Trump’s and his family’s and his consigliere’s crimes, and the one investigating Mitch McConnell’s wife, you’re hastening the unchecked power and unpunished criminality he seeks. For this is definitional autocracy; it’s Putin’s Russia, Kim’s North Korea, Saddam’s Iraq. By pretending otherwise, convincing yourself it doesn’t now and won’t ever affect you or your children or theirs, you join history’s collaborators, by whose acquiescence dictators have always taken power. People like you, the silence of the cowed, are the reason it happens.

How about Trump’s thersitical attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci? Like Trump, do you share Gameshow Chuck Woolery’s take: everyone is lying but Trump? If so, let’s talk about that, too, because here’s the thing: changing his message when facts change is to his credit: science isn’t static. It looks for errors, admits them, evolves with new information. Does Trump? Do you? (Update: Woolery deleted his Trump-retweeted tweet: his son just got the virus.) 

Dr. Fauci’s early statements can be questioned, when he still hoped Trump would become a leader. And Trump brags about “closing” entry to the US from China (late and only partially), after Fauci said it wouldn’t help. That’s Trump’s indictment. Two million cases and one-hundred-forty thousand deaths later, who was right? When he turns reality upside-down, asserting he saved “millions of lives,” Trump figures you’re willing to forget his delayed action, absent planning, and mockery of and refusal to follow the recommendations of Dr. Fauci and governors like ours. 

And now he’s cutting the CDC out of its longstanding business of data-collection and analysis. Confident of your gullibility, Trump’s only plan is to hide facts and overwhelm you with disinformation. (But if you praise him, he’ll turn the Oval Office into QVC for you.)

As with climate change, Trump’s incapacity is confirmed by his resorting to impugning coronavirus science and scientists. Having spawned the planet’s worst response to Covid-19, he’s trying to avoid blame by discrediting and silencing one of his only credible voices. Who, unlike soulless sycophant Mike Pence, thinks you need and can handle the truth. Trump’s attempted Maoist-like purge of Dr. Fauci is a humiliating admission of failure. As always, Trump defaults to his lifelong behaviors: attack, blame, deny, lie. And grift. Always the grift. 

To continue his transgressions against America for his own benefit, Trump counts on you to be not just part of the problem, but the problem itself. Are you, still?

Decency, And The Lack Thereof

 

My friend is a rare bird: a true conservative. We disagree on some political issues, though not as strenuously as one might think. After all, until Newt Gingrich emerged like a creature from the swamp, leading inevitably to our current deliberately divisive “president,” liberals and conservatives could get along. Share coffee and the occasional adult beverage.

 

A gun-owner, hunter, NRA member and, like me, a veteran, he believes military-style weapons belong only in military hands. Because he’s a real conservative, my friend didn’t vote for Trump and won’t this time, either. I haven’t convinced him not to throw away his vote on a third party or write-in, but I’m working on it.

 

In these times, I argue, traditional political disagreements take a back seat to preservation of those ideals which, until Trumpism, all Americans have valued, and which are under coordinated attack: The Constitution and its separation of powers, Congressional oversight of the executive, free and fair elections; inquisitive, skeptical, and free press; an informed, un-propagandized electorate. My friend shares those values, but he’s wary of Joe Biden.

 

Whatever else is true of ol’ Joe, I tell him, he’ll surround himself with qualified, smart, non-sycophantic people. Unlike Trump, he’ll listen to advice, welcome disagreement. He’ll read his intelligence briefings. He and his appointees won’t lie more than normal politicians do, which means not outrageously, repetitively, about facts that are obvious, and those that don’t fit on a bumper-sticker. Mid-crisis, he won’t try to lie it away, blame others, or golf. He’ll reregulate pollution, and address the dangers of climate change. He won’t consider the opposition un-American, nor wink at violence against them. He’d never ignore Russian bounties on American troops.

 

My friend recognizes the dangers of another four years of Trump. Like me, he worries about armed uprising that Trump is all but openly encouraging, should he lose. We both hate violence connected to protests; I’ve shown him the evidence that most is being fomented by far-right elements, intended to discredit those trying to effect overdue, positive change. 

 

These are unprecedented, dangerous times. Democracy is, quite literally, on the ballot. Trump’s America is becoming an autocracy. It’s no longer a world leader; not in science, not in dealing with crises, or sacrifice when it’s called for, or standing for human rights. Not, perhaps most importantly, in decency.

 

That’s what November comes down to. Not budgets, or taxes, or guns. Not the size of government. Decency. Simple decency. The choice is between Joe Biden, who, even if you disagree with him, is a decent man; and Trump, who never has been. Not ever. Not in marriage or his family, not in business, or as “president.” It’s between a man calling upon our shared humanity, and one who’s chosen to base reelection on cultivating the worst in us.

 

A definitional sociopath, Trump set dog-whistle aside and, in the shadow of Mt. Rushmore, made it obvious: to maintain power, his campaign will resort to pitting us against each other, playing to bigotry, demonizing the opposition, and lying. Lying about BLM and “antifa,” about Covid-19; about his negative leadership which, along with several like-mindless Republican governors, has made us the only country in which infections -- and hospitalizations! -- are exploding.

 

Without a return to decency, we’ll see more people pulling guns on each other; threatened lynchings; grandmas shouting at BLM protestors, promising to teach their grandchildren to hate them; cars aiming at peaceful demonstrators. Tucker Carlson, Fox “news” most despicable racist, will remain their most popular host. We’ll continue to dismiss people seeking a more just country as, in his words, “America-haters,” and in Trump’s, “…the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters…” In a decent America, we’ll resume listening to each other, rejecting such malevolence. We’ll see fewer mask-refusing Trumpists deliberately coughing on store employees, and we’ll see less of this. 

It’s plausible some Trump voters aren’t racist or indecent. Yet, by voting for him, they condone those attributes in him: separating and caging children; disgraceful lying; dismissing people demanding racial justice as terrorists. They surrender to his characterizing the many based on the few. Rather than reflecting on the meaning of Confederate symbols to African-Americans, for example, they accept Trump’s laughable pretense about “protecting history.” 

 

Unlike Trump, who isn’t, Joe Biden is decent. Increasingly divided by hate, we need that most of all right now. I’ll keep prodding my friend. He’s a listener.

 

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Barr, The Door

"Trump is the most purely evil human being I've ever met..." — Tony Schwartz, actual author of “Art of the Deal.”

Maybe he never met Bill Barr.

If Trump is the lesser evil, it’s because he’s so damaged that he can’t help being amoral, any more than the proverbial scorpion could help killing the frog. Barr, on the other hand, made a conscious choice to be Trump’s handmaiden, purposefully subverting the Department of Justice. Not just evil: he could be the most dangerous man in D.C., though between Trump, Barr, and Mitch McConnell, it’s a tough choice. That treacherous triumvirate has so damaged democracy it’ll be tough for Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress to make it right. If, by now, it’s even possible.

Attorney General William Barr wasted no time in weaponizing our DOJ as projector and protector of presidential power, rather than a guardian of justice for all citizens. His opening act, mischaracterizing the Mueller report, was as cynical as it gets. He knew truth would out, but figured if his lies got there first, he could count on Fox “news” and other rightwing media to bury Mueller’s real findings. Calling the investigation “… a grave injustice… unprecedented in American history” (maybe he never met Hillary Clinton), he expected Trump’s supporters to accept his version, facts be damned. They did, and still do. The truth is, Robert Mueller was too soft.

It’s gotten worse. Here, in cronylogical order, are some of Barr’s lesser-known offenses, presaging his recent explosion of two-handed digital salutes to democracy: he undertook a spurious anti-trust action against a few small cannabis producers; he went after automakers for rejecting Trump’s deregulation by agreeing to California’s clean-air rules (like the Constitution, federalism is important to Republicans only when it suits them); asked how history would judge his actions, he said, “History is written by the winners.”

But it’s the recent, blatant attacks on separation of powers, on elections, and on peaceful protests that confirm his true nature and purely Trumpophilic agenda. If “evil” is too inflammatory, what else shall we call turning the DOJ into an attack-dog for an all-powerful “president,” accountable to no one, not even the electorate? This is America, after all; not Trump’s idolized Russia.

Barr’s effort to end the case against Michael Flynn, who’d pleaded guilty to two counts of perjury, is the least of it. Where shall we place his approval, around which he danced like Sean Spicer on DWTS, of the brutal removal of peaceful protestors so Trump could perform his Bible-walk desecration? As threatening as it was to the First Amendment, it’s still not his worst. The soviet-style purging the Southern District of New York of its US Attorney, mid-investigation of Trump’s shady businesses and henchmen, ranks higher, even as he fumbled so clumsily in his desperation to get it done.

The man he fired, Republican Geoffrey Berman, garners bipartisan respect as a man of integrity. For a replacement, Barr chose a golf-buddy of Trump who’s never prosecuted a case of any sort. He has, however, lawyered for Deutsche Bank, fined for laundering billions in Russian mob money, provider of millions in loans to Trump. Suspicious? Not to Senate Rs and incorrigible Trumpists. If it were Eric Holder similarly protecting President Barack Obama, would we hear such high-decibel silence?

As egregious as that full-frontal attack on constitutional democracy is, there’s something still worse: namely, his transparently craven lie about voting by mail. Ignoring his role as defender of free and fair elections, he simply made up warnings about the most powerful way to circumvent Republicans’ undemocratic vote-suppression tactics. It “opens the floodgates for widespread fraud,” he conjured. Foreign governments could create a deluge of fake ballots, he prophesied. Right. Tailored to each of thousands of precincts and parishes? Then what? Bring bulging bags to post offices around the country? “Pleez to be taking for mail. Eez okay no problem.”

We expect perpetual prevarication from our perfidious “president,” but Barr is the putative chief law-enforcer of our country, lying between his jowls, not caring how preposterous; protecting his boss, scorning the American people.

A word about Trump’s inaction over Russia paying Taliban fighters $100,000 per killed US and coalition soldier. While Congress is briefed on the mounting evidence and other countries share theirs, only three entities deny it: Russia, the Taliban, and Trump, the boy who cried hoax. Res, as they say on the streets, ipsa loquitur.  

Finally, on this Independence Day, consider the obvious consequences of having a “president” who ignores intelligence, whether it’s about a pandemic or the actions of his “friend” and our enemy, Putin, and so much more; who, while our country is torn asunder by fear and hate of fellow citizens, chooses to make it worse. As campaign strategy. 

It's Satanic

Last week’s rally in Tulsa was microcosmic Trump; a preview of the contagion through which he’ll be dragging us till November. Lacking a single positive idea, presenting no vision to take us beyond the coronavirus crisis except to pretend it away, making no effort to heal the division wracking our country since the killing of George Floyd, it was Trump at his lowest. 

His one-sided message, aimed only at people like those who attended unmasked, confirmed the needs of a nation are irrelevant to him. The role of “leader” of a diverse nation was ignored as if it were a virus. “Elected” with no experience in governance, four years later he’s learned nothing.

It was a festival of grievance aimed at the embittered; not just downplaying, but mocking the disease that’s taken one-hundred-twenty-five-thousand American lives; the disease that, because of his incompetence and inattentiveness, is rising faster in the US than anywhere except Brazil.

That the rally even took place confirms Trump’s pathological indifference to all but himself. Facing an enormous challenge for the first time in his life, with no one to bail him out, requiring tough and untiring leadership, he’s waving the white flag, running down-ramp as fast as his bone spurs can carry him. Rather than working harder, calling upon the best of our nation, championing the need for short-term suffering for the greater good, he chose to lie and blame and move on.

The two-thirds-empty arena was filled with Trump’s signature race-baiting, fear-mongering, and outright lies. Protestors kept thousands from entering the arena, he explained, which Tulsa police denied. If Joe Biden wins, he warned, “bad hombres” will rape your women; he’ll take your guns (Really? Still?) and murder newborns. Never comfortable around strong women, he attacked Latina and Muslim Congresswomen. They hate your way of life, he prompted, to boos on que. But they cheered when he held a glass of water with one hand. The bar, it is low.

It was boilerplate stuff, his go-to demagoguery. Downplaying the virus, on the other hand, is something far worse. Trump’s pretense is killing people and he doesn’t care, which makes it satanic. Ironically, his future victims will disproportionately be his most loyal and indoctrinated supporters, as it’s they who accept the lie. We praise the sacrifices of our brave troops, they weep, but don’t ask us to wear masks.

Who could have imagined a “president” of the United States, a job formerly considered leadership of the free world, facing the ravages of a deadly pandemic, would tell people to ignore it, ridiculing the only activities known to slow it down? Implying wearing masks signifies disloyalty? Demanding, overtly, that his devotees disregard their and their loved-ones’ health in order to prove their love, and seeing them do it? But there it is: not-so-great-again America.

Testing should slow down, said Trump, because it makes him look bad. Never mind that it’s indispensable to getting back to normal. (If we stop checking documents, will illegal immigration end? What about pregnancy tests?) After his mouthpieces pretended he was kidding, he said he doesn’t kid. 

Either way, he’s curtailing funding for testing in several states, including Texas, where cases are exploding upward almost as fast as his disapproval rating. Senators have uncovered fourteen-billion unspent dollars intended by Congress to pay for testing. Trump has even ordered cutbacks on coronavirus research. And, like everything else Covid, we’ve just learned he lied about ventilators, too. 

It’s as if he WANTS his supporters to die. Seeing them obediently packing themselves together, submissively accepting his mockery of those who wish to protect themselves and others, is astonishing. It’s Jonestown, from sea-to-shining-sea. Are Trumpists really willing to die for a lie from the most damaged man ever to occupy the Oval Office, or are they so Foxotrumpified they can’t recognize what they’re being told to do, and why? It’s dystopia. It’s unimaginable: sardined believers, cheering their own ignorance. Ave Trumpum, morituri te salutant.

Because of Trump, America leads the world in failure to control the virus, which, given his obvious unsuitability for the job, was inevitable. The work was too hard for him, doing right too unfamiliar. Best to declare victory and go rallying.

As the EU considers banning travel from here, Trump’s America has become an international pariah. Mystified and worried by our rapid fall from respectability, the world now sees us as undesirables. Trump’s scarlet hat is our nation’s scarlet letter.

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Credulity

“If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country…” Donald Trump, interview in People Magazine, 1998.  

Credulity. It wouldn’t be credible to argue it only infects Trumpofoxians. Nevertheless, one sees far fewer obvious falsehoods coming from the online left than from the right. Cultivated credulity has created such a hermetic barrier between left and right that it looks impossible ever to find a way back. And whether or not it’s equally distributed (it’s not), the deliberate nurturing and propagation of it comes mainly from one side. 

Among liberal cable news partisans, there aren’t intentional liars like the stars of Fox “news” and the screamers of Limbaughland. Or Trump. Or foreign-based, online efforts to divide Americans and bring down our democracy by reelecting Trump; or, if it fails, to discredit the election.  

Last week’s column addressing Trump’s and Fox’s lies about antifa fell on deaf eyes, as usual. One Trumpist responded with pictures of so-called antifa members arrested in recent riots. He declined to supply the source, but I found it, and, surprise, it was a compendium of people charged in a Portland uprising a couple years ago, not a single one of whom was identified as antifa.  

Next came a link to an end-times website, posting about Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, CHAZ. Complete with mischaracterized pictures, it claimed “Antifa soldiers” had beat up a sidewalk preacher there, choked him as he cried out “I can’t breathe,” while onlookers jeered. Amazingly, it included video which showed he was being hugged, not choked or beaten. 

How credulous must one be to believe, despite evidence of the opposite? How mushy is the mind that accepts the horrifying but fabricated descriptions of CHAZ Fox “news” offloads, and not actual live feeds from local sources?  

Then, as darkness follows night, came assertions about George Soros funding antifa, and the tired claim that he collaborated with Nazis in WWII, and is now working to destroy democracy. Which, as one can learn from a moment’s searching of responsible sources, makes Trump’s coronavirus lies seem positively Socratic. 

Why and how Soros became bogeyman #1 for Trumpists isn’t mysterious, but given who he is and what he actually does to support democracy around the world, it’s credulity to the ninety-ninth power.  

In Trump’s greatened America, fifty-three Qanon believers are running for Congress: paranoid people who accept the stupefying conspiracy that Satan-worshipping pedophiles rule the world, possibly from pizza parlors.  

There’s more, like video of people screaming at city council meetings, convinced that wearing masks dangerously raises blood CO2 levels. Masked for hours almost daily, as a surgeon for decades, I … disagree. While cases surge, mask-eschewing Trump just announced the virus is “fading away.” What does it say if he believes that? What does it say if he doesn’t?  

“The breakup of the United States of America is already under way,” brayed a member of the Russian Duma recently, thus illuminating the real significance of America’s credulity problem: it serves the enemies of democracy, including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Trump. When Americans are unable to separate fact from fiction, those foes win and our republic loses. (tinyurl.com/2russia4love)  

Spreading disinformation to the credulous isn’t new, but Republicans like Newt Gingrich, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, and now, Trump, weaponized it, flooding the zone with so many lies that people gave up calling them out. So successful is it that those adversaries recognized its potential to further their aims. Not only have they exploited widespread credulity to influence our elections, aided by Trump and his Congressional co-conspirators, they’ve convinced millions they haven’t. That’s meta-credulity. (tinyurl.com/fake2u)  

Education, to which Republicans refer as brainwashing, is a powerful antidote to credulity. Equally potent are the workings of a free and skeptical press, which is why Trump calls it “fake news.” For too many currently in power, too much depends on keeping credulity alive. And too many Trumpophiles welcome the slumber of its comforting embrace.  

Trumpist credulity now faces its biggest challenge. Confirming everything Trump’s impeachment exposed, and more, John Bolton’s book has discharged a Foxotrumpian effluvium, enjoining the credulous to deny or excuse the malversation to which he bears witness. (Which is it? Lies, or classified?) 

During the impeachment trial, Senate Republicans cravenly refused to call Mr. Bolton. Do terminally credulous Trumpists finally understand why?  

Oh. Almost forgot: that Trump quote, still around, is fake. 

It's Not Antifa

After eighteen-thousand documented false statements from our “president,” you’d think everyone would assume he’s lying until proven otherwise. You’d be wrong, of course.  

Repeated endlessly, amplified by a carefully-crafted network of media propagandists, Trump’s lies are gobbled like manna, leading para-Trumpists to conclude there’s no downside to lying. “My attitude was get it done, but I didn’t say, ‘Go do it,” said William Barr, about the attack on peaceful protestors at Lafayette Square. Pepper spray isn’t a chemical, he added. Like Mueller found no crimes. From Trump and adjacent, lying is Plan A. Here’s the perfect example: “Antifa.”  

Short for anti-fascist, the term described various groups in post-war Germany dedicated to preventing fascism from rising again. Connected loosely, if at all, they were, in essence, detectives, looking for leftovers from the Reich. People who wanted to preserve freedom and democracy from fascism. The idea naturally spread to America, where, until Trump, Nazis were disliked.  

Raise your hand if you know what Antifa is here; its headquarters, its command structure, its membership requirements and how many it has. Do you know how to pronounce it? Are you sure all demonstration disrupters are Antifa? Keep your hand up if you believe it’s more dangerous to democracy than white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys, the KKK. Have you seen Antifa members recruiting here, like Proud Boys are? Are you okay with the use of military spy-planes over American citizens? 

Omitting the aforementioned rightwing gangs of “very fine people” who actually do have structure, recruitment, funding, and nationwide reach, Trump has described only Antifa as terrorists. Based on a report by a Russian operative working for a Russian propaganda network and carried on more-Trumpist-than-Fox OANN, (which looks a lot like “ONAN”) he even suggested the old man (my age) who was pushed by police is “possible Antifa,” and implied his skull-cracking fall was a gravity-enhancing “setup.” Not the first of Trump’s Russia-sourced conspiracies.  

As Trump lurches ever further from his rocker, his confabulations are exploited online by entities posing as Antifa, announcing non-existent plans for violent invasions into white neighborhoods. One such deceiver has been identified as the white nationalist cabal “Identity Evropa.” In Snohomish, Klamath Falls, across the nation, the deceived show up, armed and drinking, which isn’t dangerous. When the fabricated invasion doesn’t happen, what so proudly they prance.  

Contrary to Trump’s and Barr’s assertions, no one arrested in the current chaos has been identified as Antifa, whereas the presence of white supremacists and other rightwing agitators has been confirmed. The consequences of these “presidential” lies are grave. Inflamed by Trump, Barr, fascist-flirt Senator Tom Cotton, and Fox “news” saying the appropriate response to peaceful protest is sending in the troops, citizens are driving into crowds, grabbing long guns from their trucks and threatening to shoot. Doing it, in some cases. Even here, on Capitol Hill.  

It’s not hard to believe this is exactly what Trump intends. Accustomed to lying or cheating or blaming his way out of personal responsibility for his entire life, he’s becoming increasingly desperate for something, anything, by which to regain traction. To help you ignore his serial failures and the flood of generals and admirals finally calling him out; even stirrings among Republicans.  

From his depleted trick-bag, Trump chose the worst, which is to say the most Trumpian, option: turn citizens exercising their First Amendment right of assembly, petitioning equal justice from their government, into the enemy; get Trumpo-Americans exercising their Second Amendments rights to believe, and unleash the hounds of Hell. Seeding the civil war he has all but called for, should he be unable to suppress enough votes in November.  

After Trump’s third-world-dictator attack on peaceful protesters, sending his message of “domination,” Americans are fighting each other. Convinced all demonstrators are “Antifa,” which, it’s been shown, comprises virtually none of the protestors we’re seeing, Trumpists feel empowered to threaten their lives, spewing Trump-endorsed rage at fellow Americans advocating liberty and justice for all. This may be his most dangerous, anti-American lie of all.  

Meanwhile, as he pretends Antifa is our foremost enemy, Trump is precipitously and without consultation reducing our troops in Germany. This pleases Putin, who’s moving forces to his western border. What election help, and more, one wonders, has Putin has promised in return?  

To salvage our democracy, it’s November or never.  

For those interested in discovering what Antifa is and is not, these links are a start.

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Racism, Protest, And Trump

The thread of racism runs through the fabric of America. Anyone who pretends otherwise, who believes our justice system is free from it, who fails to understand it’s at the heart of these demonstrations, is deluded. 

Contrary to claims, the election of President Barack Obama didn’t mark its end. Like jogging or birdwatching, presidenting while black provoked racist fury, eventually helping to “elect” Trump, whose racism was obvious long before he back-doored politics by way of Kenya. Before he urged participants to “knock the crap” out of protestors at his rallies, before he told police to be rough when arresting people.  

White Americans can grieve, but we can never feel what it’s like to be African-American when yet another is killed by cops in circumstances unlikely to have extinguished a white person. None of us has had to teach our sons how to avoid being murdered, nor feared for their lives whenever they went out. Who can say they wouldn’t be protesting, rioting even, if skins were exchanged? 

Policing mass protests is tough. This isn’t about cops. It’s about bad ones and unequal justice. And bad people and their bad president, who didn’t start it but has made it worse, before, during, and, no doubt, after the current turmoil. He thinks it plays well for him.  

It’s an unending cycle: brutal police action results in the death of an African-American; angry protests arise, initially peaceful. Then someone throws a brick, a firebomb, looting starts, police respond, people are arrested, violence becomes the story, peaceful protestors are ignored, the underlying issues are suffocated. Again.  

The words of no president could entirely quell violence. Before Trump, though, they’ve tried. Only he, seeing personal advantage, has intentionally poured accelerants into the flames. Incapable of rising to the occasion, he could no more appeal to our best than he could put down a cheeseburger. To him, this violence is an opportunity to distract from his incapable coronavirus leadership, to get his base even angrier, to assure their turnout in November.  

No doubt some of the violence is an expression of anger and frustration, even as it buries the message. But the overwhelming majority of protestors have been non-violent; those who aren’t make it easy to dismiss them all as, in Trump’s inspirational words, “lowlifes and losers.” Which is the point: many instigators – white supremacists, neo-fascists -- are there to do just that; and, unlike anti-fascists, the only group Trump would designate as terrorists, their presence has been documented.  

Violence is to be condemned, but a real president would acknowledge the country’s cross-cultural pain and seek ways to heal it. Instead, eager to look tough, Trump chooses to make it worse, threatens to unleash “vicious dogs and ominous weapons,” calls governors “weak” while sequestered in a bunker in a darkened White House. (He was only “inspecting it,” he told Fox “news.”) Lacking the moral authority of presidents past, he calls for cruelty, not calm.  

In his most disgusting act, ever, which is like picking the hottest tree in a forest fire, Trump, aping third-world dictators, facilitated by his (no longer our) Attorney General, had peaceful citizens dispersed with gas, rubber bullets and low-flying helicopters, before imperiously strutting across the street, followed dutifully by the Secretary of Defense and, decked out in combat fatigues, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. To posture with a Bible, with whose content he’s unfamiliar. 

Never have Trump’s phony religiosity and authoritarian phantasies been so evident, nor his certainty that his supporters are fools. Which they were quick to confirm. That Book should have melted his face like the Lost Ark.  

It’s heartening to see police and elected officials kneeling with protesters, and black demonstrators stopping white agitators from further carnage, pleading for calm, protecting a white cop. But Trump and his enablers will never address racial inequality. It’s up to all of us, liberal and conservative, finally to do so; and, because it’s now or never, to recognize the mounting danger we thought impossible: a democracy-destroying “president,” exploiting justified demonstrations to drag us ever closer to the military-backed dictatorship he craves; whose latest actions have been so disturbing, so sinister, they leave one bereft of words.  

So hear Joe Biden’s instead. Consider what we might regain, if there’s time; if military leaders find the integrity to refuse Trump’s despotic demands; if Republicans reclaim the American values for which they once stood; and if white people finally listen. Really listen.

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Twit

Even diehard Trumpists in our state know he’s lying about vote-by-mail. We’ve done it, scandal-free, for years. His claim that it’s rife with fraud is absurd, so much so that you’d think the aforementioned delusionaries would wonder: if he lies so blatantly about this, maybe the people calling him a constant, pathological liar are right.  

Unless it wasn’t covered on Fox “news,” Trumpists also know the only fraud related to mailed ballots was in the 2016 election, in North Carolina, where Republican operatives collected ballots from trusting people in Democratic districts, promising to turn them in, saving them the trouble. The ballots were squirreled. 

Why are Trump and Trumpists afraid of vote-by-mail? Most studies have shown it favors neither party; in fact, by making it easier for older folks to vote, and since older folks tend to vote conservative, some studies have suggested an advantage for Republicans. Wherefore, then, the obvious lies?  

Simple: voting by mail foils Republicans’ time-tested tools of voter suppression and deceit. Closing or understaffing polling places in Democratic districts, limiting hours -- favorite forms of chicanery in red states -- become irrelevant. Hacking voting machines, in which Moscow Mitch knows Russians have dabbled but refuses to act, and the ease of which has been demonstrated by children, goes away. 

Software-based vote-switching disappears, too. And mailed ballots can be reviewed, which, lacking paper records, most voting machines don’t allow; especially those preferred by red states, manufactured by Republican-donor companies like Diebold. 

By neutralizing GOP voter suppression, voting by mail provides more opportunity for everyone, even Democrats. Mystery solved. 

Parenthetically, the Fox-hyped report of thirty-eight-million “missing” mail-in ballots nationwide included every ballot mailed out and not returned. Ballots sent to the wrong address, ballots sent to people who didn’t vote. A loose definition of “missing.”  

This week, Trump threw another tantrum: his favorite prevarication platform pushed back on his voting lies. Twitter, on which Trump spends hours daily, an activity to which he refers as “working,” attached links to some of his tweets, allowing readers to find the truth. In a signature would-be-dictator’s meltdown, he threatened to eliminate Twitter, showing, yet again, his – let’s call it – “misapprehension” of presidential power. And censorship. Big-tech social media squelches “conservative voices,” he whined. 

If only. He’s been getting away with contumelious lies forever. Plus, if he’s conservative, Jeffery Dahmer was vegan.  

Particularly ironic about this latest Donnie-brook is that his followers don’t care a snowflake’s worth if he’s lying; the last thing any of them would do is follow a link to bubble-bursting knowledge.  

Twitter ought to have kicked him off, permanently. His definitionally insane, law-suit worthy implication that Joe Scarborough murdered an aide violates its rules in ways that are supposed to result in being expunged. But Twitter and Facebook have always allowed outrageous falsehoods to spread like swamp scum. Multi-billionaire Zuckerberg just told Fox “news” he won’t be fact-checking Trump. Twitter, though, says it will continue. Good.  

Given such mendacity from a “president” so disconnected from reality, who models ignorance the way strippers model pasties, perhaps we should excuse our fellow citizens who consider it tyranny to be told to wear masks while hoarding toilet paper. Let’s hope their refusal is only Trump-augmented ignorance. Maybe they’re unaware that, because people can be carriers without being sick, wearing masks protects others from the wearer, not the other way around. If it’s not ignorance, then it’s “Trump doesn’t wear a mask, so I won’t, either. I don’t care if I make you sick.” Such people could properly be called deplorable.  

It’s bad enough that ignorance has become fundamental to Trumpism. To think it’s hate-based, too, is worse. For many Trumpists, though, it is: in great-again America, they hang a Democratic governor in effigy, taunt and spit on people who care enough to wear masks. Asians are their latest target. 

This week Trump sneered that a masked reporter was only being “politically correct.” And said he didn’t want to give reporters the “satisfaction” of seeing him (showing concern for Americans by) wearing one. That’s a deeply disturbed individual.  

States run by denialist governors are now experiencing dramatically increased infections. By contrast, Governor Beshear, that effigized governor, is admirable. Here’s his response to the contemptable act. Improbably, Kentucky contains both him and Mitch McConnell.   

True conservatives should be urging everyone to vote Trump out. Here in Washington, it’s easy. You can mail your ballot in, and you don’t even need postage.    

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Memorial Day

Reposting something I wrote a couple of years ago:

(Think about the last two lines, above. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.)

Monday, Memorial Day, a friend shared a Facebook meme: “Only two defining forces have offered to die for you. Jesus Christ, and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom...”  

And I thought, those who served in Vietnam as I did, before and after, killed there, didn’t die for our freedom. They died because they were poor, mostly, couldn’t get student deferments, or have daddies who bought them a pair of invisible bone spurs. They died not knowing or caring why they were there. Quoting another veteran, they died for a mistake. Taking and returning fire, they fought to protect themselves and their squadron, not anyone else. All they wanted was to ride those “freedom birds” back to the world with as many of their limbs as possible. The ones I evacuated mostly didn’t. Their Purple Hearts came at a much higher price than mine. And those who died were still dead three days later.  

I served in Danang, not far below the DMZ. “Rocket City,” we called it. When the rockets rained in and we dove for cover, it wasn’t for anyone’s freedom but our own. The beach there, China Beach, was beautiful, though; white sand, mild surf, and warm waters comparing favorably with the occasional nurse from the 95^th Evac stripping her combat fatigues down to a bikini, as choppers patrolled the shore, gunners sitting halfway out the doors, feet resting on the struts, protecting our freedom to swim.  

Just down the beach was the civilian MACV compound, fenced, guarded, green, quartering contractors making big money servicing the war. Someday, I figured, China Beach would be a destination spot, adorned with expensive hotels, win or lose. And so it is.  

Protecting America’s freedom had nothing to do with it. Especially not to the orchestrators. The Domino Theory was a useful selling point. Now our trading partner, Vietnam did fall. And it has hotels and McDonalds.   If the term makes sense, World War II was a good war. There was a definable cause, and undeniable need. It liberated people held in cages, terminating that practice and Nazism forever for a while. And it ended the Depression. 

Afghanistan was justifiable, might even have made us safer, had Rumsfeld not let Osama off the hook, had Bush not bailed to pursue unrevealed intentions. Iraq’s “Domino Theory” was “Bringing Democracy to the Middle East,” as bogus as the former, and as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It was never about protecting our freedom, even though more who fought there, and more people back home, believed it was; more than was the case with Vietnam. By then, propaganda had found a louder voice. Dick Cheney’s stock in Halliburton made out. Oil companies and defense contractors, too. Most everyone else paid dearly for the adventurism, and the bill still isn’t settled. 

It’s easier to believe our wars have been to defend freedom than to consider other reasons. No matter what, those who died deserve our veneration. And contrition, for the lives we’ve enjoyed since they lost theirs. And for our complicity in sending them, unquestioning, to fight wars instigated by old men whose kids rarely did, for reasons obscured beneath star-spangled bromides.  

It’s wrong, and lazy, to define patriotism only in terms of war; equate it only with those convinced to fight, for reasons they’re made to believe. It’s not their belief that needs questioning: it’s that of those who slap “Support Our Troops” stickers on their cars and trucks, fly flags that say “Behold my patriotism,” coal-roll, vote for tax cuts that deprive veterans of their rightful benefits, and call themselves patriots. 

After serving in Vietnam, Memorial Day makes me more angry than sad. Once a year the tears are real; the absence of those who died is eternal. Yet we remain at war, even as phony platitudes and intimations of future wars from a “president” who dodged the draft by fakery expose the day of remembrance as the manipulation it has always been. My friend, an honorable man who didn’t serve, believes with all his heart. I respect him for that. My anger may be overly self-righteous, but military members aren’t the only Americans protecting our freedom. So are teachers, nurses, housekeepers, factory workers, researchers, parents, climate protestors, plumbers, Social Democrats, the remaining actual conservatives, community organizers… 

But not those keeping us in a state of perpetual war, selling the myth that freedom is the reason.